


Kirkwall Tango

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Acting, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Theatre, Christmas, F/F, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, Musicals, Performance Art, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-27 13:27:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 8,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The merry band of misfits who make up the Kirkwall Players Society may not be out to save the city from tearing itself apart, but at least they're entertaining.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gossip

“Are we ready to go?” Varric asks. Across the room, Merrill nods and sets her book aside and clears her throat. Everyone quiets down around the edges of the room, and Andy can almost hear her humming to herself. He picks up the pistol and tucks it into the back of his jeans. This is the best part, he thinks, clearing his own throat and dropping himself into the mind of his frustrated, angry teenage self, which is a lot further back in his past than he cares to admit. He nods, and Garrett turns on the stereo before he puts his arm back around Isabela’s shoulders.

“Awful sweet to be a little butterfly,” he sings. “Just wingin’ over things, with nothing deep inside…”

Behind him, Fenn leans over and whispers to Sebastian. “He’s too old for this part.”

“Aren’t we all?” Sebastian whispers back. “We’re all at least thirty now except for Beth and Carver.”

Don elbows Fenris in the ribs. “Shut up.”

“Fenn’s just bitching because he feels guilty for not calling me back yet,” Marian chimes in. She leans across Don, one meticulously groomed eyebrow arching. “Don’t make me get Isabela to force you to do it, Fen. You owe me a coffee to make up for doing what you did.”

“Is a coffee all it’ll take to earn your forgiveness? Because if it is I think you’re letting me off too easily.”

She shrugs. “I could be asking for a lot more than coffee. Like your car. I’d love your car now that you bring it up. You can give me the keys after rehearsal.”

A tall shadow falls over them. Andy is pissed. “I’m sorry, is rehearsal interrupting your gossip time? Merrill and I will just wait for you to finish, then?”

Merrill appears beside him, small and dark and frowning. “It is rude, guys. Andy’s younger than all of you and Fenn doesn’t even own that car. You can’t drive it anyway, Marian.” They all glare at her while Aveline, Sebastian, Isabela, and Garrett try to not laugh out loud. Merrill’s profound lack of tact is charming when it happens to other people, and mildly offensive if directed at you. 

“Okay, kids, break it up,” Varric says. “We open in just over a week and we need to take this seriously. Queue up the music again, Gare.” He points at Andy and Merrill. “Places, you two, and from the top.”


	2. Happy Holidays

It’s the beginning of winter. It gets dark too early and stays that way longer than it should, at least as far as Andy is concerned. He hates being cold and he hates the snow and he hates Christmas and he hates seeing holiday decorations and hearing the same renditions of Christmas music every single day no matter where he goes.

His birthday was a week ago. He’s thirty-one years old, 6’1”, 185 pounds on a good day. He has astigmatism. He wears glasses around his apartment and contacts when he goes out because he’s too fickle to ever settle on a set of frames that he likes enough to wear every day. He didn’t shave this morning, and he hasn’t washed his hair since Saturday. 

It’s Tuesday morning, and he’s walking to the café on the corner that only ever seems to have high school kids behind the counter no matter what time of day it is. Or maybe he’s just so old now they seem younger than they are. It’s warm inside, blindingly bright with thousands of rainbow Christmas lights wrapped around anything that can have strand lights wrapped around them, and there’s so much silver tinsel stapled to the front the counters they looks like shiny hedges.

Almost all of the self-serve coffee carafes are empty, the half-and-half is unopened and slightly warm, and there are no sugar packets. The dollar store mustard bottle full of honey is preferable to the pastel colored packets of sweeteners. His coffee is slightly burnt and tastes like three different flavors. It’s terrible, but he takes the cup to the counter and orders scrambled eggs whites (because they don’t use egg yolks, which seems incredibly wasteful to him) and whole wheat toast , and the girl behind the counter with pink hair too much eyeliner and more studs in he’s ever seen on anyone’s face before hands him a little red plastic flag with a number on it and tells him to sit wherever he wants.

He wonders into the dining area and wonders what happens when she walks through metal detectors. Maybe the studs conduct electricity and fry her brain; it would explain the pink raccoon look she’s going for. He feels bad because she’s perfectly nice and the other girl with pink hair and no piercings is actually kind of cute in a way that makes him feel even older and kind of dirty.

There’s a table in the back corner of the room up on a platform that apparently hosts local bands every Saturday night right underneath a heating vent that has his name on it. He can see the entire café from here, and all the holiday cheer makes him vaguely nauseous.

He can vaguely remember the year he swore off celebrating the holidays and started smiling politely and not responding to seasonal well-wishing. He was nine. He told his teacher he was a Jehovah’s Witness and was excused from doing the holiday-themed crafts the class made to bring home to their parents. He’d seen too many of his own projects be ignored and thrown away. He had been locked out and had to climb in through one of the basement windows every day since Thanksgiving that year. It was the year he met Karl, the older boy who lived down the street and never had to worry about his parents locking him out of the house in the middle of December when it gets dark at four in the afternoon. 

As if he wasn’t miserable enough, now he’s gone and thought about Karl. The pink raccoon girl brings his eggs and toast over, smiling, and he notices the pentacle ring on her thumb and the maiden-mother-crone tattoo on her wrist as she sets the plate down in front of him. He’s a decent enough actor to not let his misery show, and he thanks her. She asks if there’s anything else he needs, he tells her no, and she tears his receipt off the pad tucked into the waistband of her apron. She puts it face-down on the tabletop, saying he can pay at the register whenever he’s done and that he can stay as long as he likes.

She doesn’t wish him any happy holidays, but hopes he stays warm. It makes him smile.


	3. Lo Mein

“Wow, they’re really getting into it, huh?” Garrett says to no one in particular when he returns to the auditorium with a bottle of Sprite from the vending machine in the lobby. It’s par for the course for Andy and Fenn to get into at least one explosive argument a week over trivial things—like how much coffee the former drinks or how the latter should really do something about the color of his hair—to bigger things like who gets cast for what parts and who should really get on calling so-and-so back because it’s been three weeks and it’s just not right to lead someone on like that. 

Next to the door, Isabela’s slouched low in her seat with a half-eaten egg roll in a wax paper bag on her lap, her elbows on the armrests and her legs crossed at the ankle where they’re balancing on the armrest of the seat in front of her. She looks up from her script, unimpressed. “What else is new?”

“I’m not sure,” Garrett says. The bottle hisses dangerously as he twists the cap off of it, threatening to bubble over. “Something seems different about it today.”

Marian nods in agreement over her carton of lo mein from her perch on the back of a seat a row below them. “I wish I had some popcorn and a better seat. Someone’s getting punched today, mark my words. My money’s on Andy kicking Fenn’s ass.”

“Andy couldn’t kick ass out of a wet paper bag, and you know it.” Isabela prods Marian’s shoulder with the toe of her boot, drawing a grunt from the other woman. “You just want to see Fenn suffer.”

“It’s what I’m asking Santa for this Christmas.” In typical Marian fashion, she punctuates the statement by bringing an ungodly amount of lo mein up to her mouth with her chopsticks and only manages to get half of it into her mouth before the rest falls back into the carton. “Fuck him, though, he doesn’t know what he’s missing. I’m a frigging catch.”

Garret pats her on the head and makes her drop more of her lo mein. “You keep telling yourself that, Mare. We both know which one of us the real catch is.”

“It’s Carver, right?” Isabela asks, smiling. 

“It’s totally Carver,” Marian says. “He would be with that ray of sunshine personality of his.” Down near the stage, Carver’s ears start ringing while he’s trying to recite his lines to Bethany without his script, so he turns around and flips his brother and sister off where they’re sitting in the back of the theatre, which they both return and Marian drops her chopsticks in her enthusiasm. Her carton of lo mein falls off her lap when she bends over to pick up her utensils.


	4. There's A Fine, Fine Line

Marian sighs and adjusts the puppet on her arm and tries to ignore how much her palm is sweating on the inside of its head while she waits for Varric to give her her cue to start. She’s not really sure exactly how she ended up filling in for Bethany as Kate Monster, but she doesn’t hate it. The puppets are cute and they’re a challenge to work with, and the music is fun. She’s a little embarrassed to be doing this in front of everyone with the puppet—she’s only been practicing with it for a week, everyone’s used to seeing and hearing Bethany do the part, they open in two days, and she’s not a soprano.

She’s trying to ignore the urge to scratch her elbow where Kate’s skirt keeps rubbing against her skin when Varric nods for her to start. She clears her throat and takes a deep breath, preparing herself to sing at a higher, more nasal pitch than she’s used to.

“There’s a fine, fine line between a lover and a friend, and there’s a fine, fine line between reality and pretend…” It wasn’t supposed to hurt her this badly. All the ‘call me back’ talk was just that—talk. She didn’t mean it. She didn’t like him. He’s Fenn. He’s a dick, and they’d been drunk, and it hadn’t meant anything. It wasn’t supposed to hurt, but it does and she hates that it does. “…I guess if someone doesn’t love you back it isn’t such a crime, but there’s a fine, fine line between love and a waste of your time…”

She can’t breathe by the time she finishes the song, and she realizes she’s crying. Everyone’s silent in the first few rows in front of the stage, and they’re staring at her. She drops the puppet and walks off stage left and out the emergency exit into the alley. It’s snowing. It’s freezing. She left her jacket inside. She doesn’t care.

“Marian, wait.”

“Fuck off.”

“You fuck off,” Andy says. He grabs her arm and pulls her against his chest and puts his arms around her. “You’re going to freeze to death. Idiot.”

“You’re going to freeze too, dumbass.”

“I’ll live. I’m always cold anyway.” She laughs, hard and forced and short, and then she starts to cry again. He continues to hold her even when they both start to shiver and she starts getting tears and snot on the front of his shirt. 

“Why didn’t he call me back?” she asks miserably, her hands coming up to wrap around his waist.

“I don’t know, Mare,” he whispers against her hair. “I’m so sorry.”

She looks up at him, red faced and swollen and snot-nosed and glassy-eyed and genuinely unattractive for the first time in her life. “How do you do it? Watch Garrett with her and not want to scream? Doesn’t it make you sick? Doesn’t it hurt?”

“I manage,” he says. “I go back to my empty apartment and I get drunk and I talk to my cat and cry until I fall asleep, and I do it all again the next night.”

“I don’t want that,” she says miserably. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her he isn’t exaggerating.

“No one does, honey.” He kisses her forehead, sighing again. “I wish I knew what to tell you that would make you feel better, but I’m just as confused as you are.”

The stage door creaks open again, and they turn to look at it. Varric is standing there and frowning, looking for all the world like he isn’t freezing his ass off like they are. His boots crunch on the ice and snow as he comes over to them and wraps his arms around both of them. He’s shorter than both of them.

“Come inside before you both catch pneumonia,” he says. “I sent everyone else home for the night and rescheduled for tomorrow.”

Marian sniffles. “But rehearsal—“

“It’s fine. We’ve done more with less time to prepare than this.” He gentle steers both of them back inside and urges them to sit on the big, overstuffed couch they used as a prop in some independent play a month ago before he hands them hot cocoa in paper cups from the concession stand. He hands Andy the keys and tells him to set the alarm before they leave, then cups Marian’s face in his hands. “We love you, kid. Everything’s gonna be alright.”

Marian nods kicks off her sneakers and tucks her knees up against her chest, Andy puts his arm around her shoulder and leans his head on her snow-damp hair and hums “I’ll Cover You” to her until she falls asleep against him. He eventually takes the ice cold cocoa from her sleeping hand and sets it aside and goes to lock the doors and set the alarm before he returns to her on the couch. He kisses the top of her head.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” he whispers, wishing there was at least beer in the concession stand. ”At least you had a chance. It’s not like you went and fell for someone who doesn’t even swing your way. You’re smarter than that. It’s not like you’re me or anything.”

She’s quiet the way only people who are asleep are able to be. He’s not sure if he’s grateful for that or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the song Marian's singing and wher the title come from: "There's A Fine, Fine Line" Avenue Q
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTFI9sQdpGo


	5. Elf

Merrill doesn’t like to hate things. She doesn’t like putting that negativity out into the universe.

But she really, really hates her job.

She leans heavily on the podium in front of the display and tries to not look too bored to tears. It wouldn’t do for a Christmas elf to look bored on the job, now would it? She sighs and straightens up to fix the cheap velveteen costume with literal cotton balls hot-glued to the trim, and feels Garrett and Marian’s uncle’s eyes on her backside. Except he’s not actually Garrett and Marian’s uncle at the moment. He’s Santa Claus. And she’s not sure how she feels about that.

He’s actually almost a decent sort with children, at least in the small doses, if a little perpetually confused by them. It’s charming, in a way, when he’s not looking at her arse while he does it.

“I’m going to go get something to drink,” she says. “Anyone want anything?” The photographer holds up his bagged lunch from his wife and tells her he’s good, but thanks anyway. Garrett and Marian’s uncle asks for a fully loaded double cheeseburger from the fast food place up in the food court, which is decidedly nowhere near the vending machines she was planning on going to, but she nods and heads off towards the escalator anyway, the bells on her felt shoes jingling all the way.

She likes Christmas. Except that she doesn’t actually celebrate it and is sick and tired of the music and if she hears another rendition of “Jingle Bell Rock” today she may have to hurt someone even though it’s only two in the afternoon and there’s no one in the mall to hurt at this hour.

As she places the order for Garrett and Marian’s uncle’s burger, she orders herself a small chocolate shake and an order of French fries, and decides to take her time getting back to the booth. She sits at a table squarely in the middle of the food court and quietly indulges herself by dipping her fries into the shake before she eats them and wishes she’d bought a bottle of water to go with them.

“Mommy, look!” She looks up and sees a toddler on a leash sitting at a nearby table pointing at her. “It’s an elf!”

“Leave the elf alone, honey,” the toddler’s mother says. Merrill knows elves aren’t real, but she still feels an indignant little flare of offense at being addressed as such. It’s probably for the best that she isn’t really an elf, because it would probably be very tiresome always being pointed at like this.

“She works for Santa!”

“Yes she does. Eat your food, and maybe we’ll go see Santa later.”

Merrill quietly stands up and throws away the remnants of her food , carrying the room-temperature burger in its bag back downstairs. Garrett and Marian’s uncle is less than thrilled with his cold burger, but he eats it like it’s the only food left on earth anyway and complains at her for not buying him a soda. The photographer leaves and returns some time later with a bottle of Coke for Santa and waters for himself and Merrill, and he refuses to take any money from her in exchange for his kindness.

Working in the mall-at-Christmas-time industry is a special kind of horrible, but she smiles and greets the toddler and his mother when they come down to get their picture with Santa. She sees Garrett and Don walk by with arms full of shopping bags and a long, thin shopping lists held in front of their faces. Aveline and Marian walk by sometime later, engaged in what Marian calls “retail therapy” while Aveline smiles gently and hides her disapproval like a champion. Fenn passes with a tiny bag from the jewelry store and doesn’t acknowledge her with anything more than a deep blush at being seen, and she promises she won’t tell anyone she saw him with a bag from Zales. He smiles faintly before he walks away and disappears into one of the anchor department stores.

A while later, Andy comes down to keep her company between his shifts at one of the clothing stores and the electronics store, his Geek Squad uniform shirt under his faded teal hoodie. He fiddles with the uniform’s tie while he talks to her and explains what happened last night at rehearsal.

“I saw her earlier, and she did look a little… swollen.”

“Swollen?” he asks.

“Like she’d been crying.”

“Ah. Aveline picked her up from my place this morning and took her out. I didn’t think they’d come here.”

“I saw Fenn, too,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been so nice if I knew what happened.”

“He deserves it,” Andy says with finality. “He’s not a bad guy or anything, but seriously. It was shitty.” He looks around and is glad to see there aren’t any kids nearby. “Was he shopping?”

“He had a bag from a jewelry store. Oh!” She claps her hands over her mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that!”

“He had a what, now?” An alarm starts going off in Andy’s pocket, which he looks at and curses again as he starts to walk towards the mall’s main staircase. “You’re telling me about that later!”

“I promised I wouldn’t, Andy!”

“You already brought it up. No backsies.”

And he’s gone, jogging up the stairs to the electronics store. Merrill groans and hits her head against one of the candy cane pillars making up part of the display. She really doesn’t like working at the mall around the holidays. 

She kind of hates it.


	6. Club

“I think it’s funny.” 

“You would.”

Aveline and Don are out on a date, because it’s their date night. Each and every week, no matter what, they go out and do something that they’ve never done before. This week, they’re at a bar Isabela recommended and are plotting to hurt her. Or rather, Aveline is plotting to hurt her, and Don is mildly, infuriatingly nonplussed and faintly amused.

“In retrospect, maybe we were asking for it,” Don says. He shifts closer to his wife and cautiously eyes the sassy-looking redhead making eyes at him across the bar. “She would send us to a gay bar.”

“You were asking for it,” Andy tells them from behind the bar as he mixes a gingerbread martini, which he looks displeased with having to do. “You asked Isabela, and that’s an open invitation to be fucked with. You should know better by now.”

“I’m going to kill her.” Aveline looks like she might follow through on that, until she catches sight of the redhead eyeing her husband, and then she looks like she wants to kill him, too. 

“No you won’t,” Andy says it as he walks the gingerbread martini down the bar to serve it to someone who tells him rather loudly that he has striking bone structure. Andy, unimpressed, asks the customer if that line has ever gotten them laid, to which the customer says nothing. Andy gestures for the customer to pay for their drink before he points at the far corner of the room, to which the customer sulkily goes to as if they’ve been punished. Andy comes back to Aveline and Don, looking a little bit like he wants to hurt someone, too.

“Why do you work here if you hate it so much?” Don asks. “I mean, you work at the Best Buy and H&M already, right?”

“Guy’s gotta eat.” A different customer tells Andy they have something he can eat right here. Aveline and Don both cringe at the insinuation, varying levels of repulsed on their friend’s behalf, but Andy makes a face that is simultaneously so irritated and so unattractive that the customer shuts up and stalks off to bother another employee. Andy pinches the bridge of his nose and mumbles something about Tuesdays and the Hellmouth that Aveline and Don can barely hear over the music.

“If we’re here we might as well have fun,” Don says when Andy wanders off to take care of another customer. “The music’s good, and no one’s going to notice the two of us dancing.”

Aveline sighs, knowing he’s right. She catches the eye of the redhead that keeps eyeing Don. “You want to invite your new friend?”


	7. Seventeen Degrees

She did not leave California for this.

Seventeen fucking degrees outside. 

Jesus Christ. How do you even dress for this kind of weather?

Isabela has the heat in her apartment cranked up to almost eighty to try and stem the chill as it creeps in her drafty windows and doors. The glass panes are covered in steam underneath the saran wrap she has them covered in, which she was told is a good thing to do to keep the draft out.

It doesn’t work. 

“The cold air might just be seeping in through the walls and floor,” Varric tells her when he comes by to drive her to Aveline and Don’s New Year’s party. “My mother’s place did that. It’s an old building thing.”

“It’s a shitty building thing,” Andy says when she tells him about it. “I’ve never lived in a place that I didn’t have to do that.” For some reason, that depresses her terribly, and not because it means her building is a hole.

Merrill says the room she rents from her great aunt is damp because it’s a basement, but it’s warm enough and dry and it’ll be so much fun to have Isabela stay for a while and it’ll be just like a slumber party—

Aveline and Don have the room to spare, but she wouldn’t even consider imposing on them in their perfect little married life routine by staying a few nights until the cold snap ends.

Sebastian and his nun grandmother are completely out of the question. 

“I’d offer to let you stay with me, but I’m not even staying at my place right now.” Fenn’s roof caved in after the hurricane on Halloween dropped a tree on the house and rendered the place uninhabitable until the repairs are done.

Garrett offers to have her stay with him and the twins for a while, but that has all the trappings of commitment and big steps forward and she really can’t tolerate the kicked-puppy look from Andy if she can avoid it.

After about a week of suffering and carrying around hot water bottles and wearing every article of clothing at once to stay warm because she can’t afford to turn on the space heater. She ends up bedding down with Marian in the outbuilding on the Hawke family real estate that Marian commandeered for herself when she was a teenager. It’s not much warmer, but at least there’s a fireplace and a pellet stove and a warm person to cuddle with that isn’t trying to tie her down.

And there’s wine ice cream, which is a delight even though it’s seventeen fucking degrees outside.


	8. Onyx

He never actually gives her the necklace in the bag from Zales. It haunts his hotel room like a small, sparkly spectre even though it’s sitting in the safe. He knows it’s there. He can’t not think about it.

Part of the problem is that now, it’s been over two months (forty-two days, as Andy is so very good at reminding him) since That Night, and to suddenly give it to her now seems… wrong. Rude. Unfair. He could tear out his heart and give it to her and it still wouldn’t be enough recompense for what he’s done (which Andy is also very good at reminding him of).

Why does Andy care so much anyway?

The pendant is about the size of a dime, a checkerboard cut onyx stone set into plain silver. She would hate it because she doesn’t like jewelry that doesn’t turn her skin green after a few hours, but he’d wanted to buy her something special anyway, even if it only got worn because she felt obligated, even if it only came out of her jewelry box on holidays and special occasions. Because the three hundred-plus dollars he spent on it is the absolute least he can offer her after hurting her so badly.

And he did hurt her badly. He made her cry. Marian doesn’t cry, not even when she’s acting, not even when she and Garrett and the twins lost their mother to breast cancer, not when Aveline and Don got married, not when her dog was hit by a car and they had to shoot it to put it out of it’s grisly misery. And he’d made her cry in front of all of them.

As Andy so astutely put it, “You fucked up big time.”

He doesn’t even like Andy. Why does they even bother talking to each other? Because Andy doesn’t mind talking at people because he’s self-centered enough to keep beating a dead horse just to keep hearing the sound of his own voice—Andy’s right, though. Fenn just doesn’t want to keep hearing about it or give Andy the satisfaction of getting under his skin so badly. 

He can’t stand the disappointed looks he keeps getting from Merrill, either. It’s like he’s the bad puppy that keeps messing on the carpet and she can’t bring herself to properly scold him even though they both know he deserves it.

Isabela, if she didn’t like him so much, would skin him alive and make a purse out of him. Garrett would make shoes and a wallet. Carver managed to corner him and threaten bodily harm on three separate occasions. Bethany won’t even look at him, much less talk to him unless they’re doing a scene together. Sebastian at least heard his side of things before deciding he disapproved of what happened. The only thing keeping Aveline from killing him is Don, and even he’s less than pleased with the way everything turned out.

How the hell did everyone find out about That Night i the first place?

Because none of them have any other friends to talk to, that’s why.

The necklace is in one of those little black velveteen boxes inside a cardboard one with the Zales logo on the lid, neatly wrapped in minimalist Christmas tree wrapping paper. It was the only gift he bought that didn’t fit in an envelope.

It’s the week before Valentine’s Day when he resolves to give it to her.

She’s going to hate it. He wants her to have it anyway. It’s not an apology, but it’s something, and she deserves that much.


	9. Webcam

“I just—I feel bad, y’know? And it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it, I mean, she’s a big girl and she doesn’t need me to fight for her honor or anything, but I feel like no one’s going to call him out on his bullshit if I don’t. I dunno.” 

His cellphone beeps at him, asking to be charged. He sighs. “I think that’s my cue to go to bed. It’s after two already. Time flies, huh? But you knew that already.” He chuckles humorlessly and rubs his eyes. "Ugh, I've gotta stop staying up so late like this." He sighs again, his fingertips hovering over the keyboard shortcut to stop recording. “G’night, Karl.”

Not for the first time, he wonders if it’s sad and a little morose to keep doing this. Like masochism, never letting an already old wound ever finish scabbing over so it can heal. Lorraine says everyone grieves in their own way, and that the self-help books at the bookstore aren’t the end-all-be-all way to mourn someone, and she knows this from experience. Too much experience, after losing a husband and a son to the war and a daughter to teenage foolishness. Andy figures she knows better than anyone what the best way to mourn is.

The videos were her idea, but she doesn’t know that. When he moved into the apartment over her garage six years ago, he used to hear her talking to herself as she went about her day. When he’d asked about it, she said she was talking to her daughter, who’d died earlier that year. She’d said it made her feel like the house was a little less empty. He tried doing that in the middle of the night to make himself feel more at home for a while, but it just made him feel stupid and a little bit crazy to talk to someone who’d been dead for four years by then. How it occurred to him to start making the videos is anyone’s guess, but it made a difference. 

Every other week or so, he exports each file to an external hard drive. It makes him feel productive. He hates having nothing to do. It gives him too much time to think about things, and if Andy has a major character flaw, thinking too much is it. And the only things he thinks about when he’s alone are miserable, pathetic little things.

Like talking to a long dead friend.

He puts his computer to sleep and is blinded by the sudden complete darkness. He shuffles carefully to his bed, which is little more than a pile of blankets and pillows and a cheap foam mattress cover heaped on top of a pullout couch he never bothers to close up. It’s not like anyone’s ever been further inside than the landing on the other side of the door anyway. He plugs in his phone and turns on the radio before he lies down. The blankets are cold, but there are enough of them to keep him warm as he curls up with his back to the wall and buries his face into a pillow while he waits for sleep to find him. After laying there for almost an hour, he finally drifts off halfway through “Hey Jude.”

It was Karl’s favorite song, once, a lifetime ago.


	10. Postcards

Carver writes to Post Secret every few weeks. He’s not sure why, because he doesn’t think any secrets he shares are particularly profound, but it means something to him to know that somewhere out there, Frank Warren is reading his postcards.

_“Sometimes I borrow my twin sister’s nail polish and paint my toenails. I’m a 24 year old guy. Right now they’re metallic royal blue.”_

_“I used to hate my older brother for being better looking and smarter than I am. He doesn’t know I know he lead on his gay best friend for over a year, then made out with him, and told him he’s straight. Now, I hate my brother because I know he’s a better person than that, and because I’m still not as good looking or as smart as him.”_

_“I don’t want to be a gym teacher, but I don’t know what else to do with my life. Kids don’t like me and I don’t like them, either.”_

_“The most frustrating thing is that you never read how real people talk. Never. It’s like we just can’t stand hearing our own voices, how we actually sound to each other. Maybe we’re ashamed of how fucking ignorant we always sound, no matter what.”_

_“I spent two grand building a desktop computer I only use for video games. They aren’t even good ones.”_

_“Sometimes I want to be a little kid again, just so I can pretend to be all the things I wanted to be when I grew up for a little while--a cop, a fireman, a knight, a ninja, a pirate, an astronaut...”_

_“I had a crush on my older sister when I was little. Now no one measures up to her.”_

_“One time at rehearsal, I got to kiss one of my castmates while I was helping her run lines. It’s been a boon to my solitary sex life.”_

_“I tell people Pet Cemetery is my favorite book. It’s actually a tie between Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22.”_

_“I cried during The Notebook. Alone. In the movie theatre. When I was sixteen. It was how I rewarded myself for making the JV football team.”_

_“Every night while I’m falling asleep, I think about how great it will be to be a dad someday and tucking my kids in and protecting them from the monsters in their closet. But then I remember I’m afraid of commitment and don’t like kids anyway and I fall asleep depressed.”_

He doesn’t check the website to see if any of his postcards are ever the ones that get posted, but he sends out a few every week all the same. Sometimes he doesn’t even mail them and just leaves them in coffee shops and bars, just to get them out there. 

One time he was going to put a postcard in a library copy of As I Lay Dying, and he found someone else’s stuck between the pages. It was in Andy’s handwriting. He kept it and brought it home with him and he’s never told anyone he found the postcard Andy couldn’t send away. 

_“Sometimes I think about killing myself just to see if my parents would come to my funeral. Then I remember that they never noticed I was alive to begin with and I don’t bother.”_


	11. Felt-Tip Pen

Marian likes long sleeves and things that cover her skin. She has nothing to hide but the dark, downy hair on her forearms and legs and the little smattering of coarser hair from her pierced navel to her mound and a few freckles and moles, but she likes to keep it all a secret anyway.

It’s much less tempting when there’s no visible skin to want to sully.

She likes being pale, how she glows a little in the dark when she takes off her clothes, how she can see the road map of blue veins full of red blood under the surface of her skin. It makes her feel pristine, like a freshly stretched canvas waiting to be brought to life by lines and color. She’s always wanted tattoos, to turn her body into art, but she’d never managed to come up with a design she thought she could live with, except for the stylized mash-up of her parents’ families’ crests she and Garrett both sported on their inner left forearms.

She always wanted more, or to carve designs into her flesh, but she never could. Too fickle, too mercurial, too inconsistent, generally too chipper to be prone to cutting herself even to achieve artistic scarification. The few times she attempted it, the results were never deep enough to last more than a few days before disappearing without a trace.

She scratched, but Marian never cut. She never tried to exorcise herself like that, and never felt the need to. It was an urge only Merrill seemed to understand, and it was what they bonded over--their itchy little habits. Merrill’s had once been her demon, but Marian’s was a brainstorm, a flurry of words that would lodge themselves in her brain or patterns she’d keep repeating on the margins of notebook paper.

She carries around a pale blue felt-tip pen that’s almost a near match for the color of her veins. She uses it when she has an urge. When she’s performing, she uses Chapstick, and likes how it lingers invisibly on her skin.

For a long time after That Night, she was covered in lost words-- _abandoned, misplaced, used, discarded_ \--and dirty words-- _harlot, wicked, cock, fuck_ \--comforting words-- _canvas, ink, Andy, marker, Merrill, family_ \--and one word repeated so many times down one of her arms it looked like blue foliage: _Fenn_.


	12. Rehearsal

“I’m not bleaching my hair, Garrett.”

“Bethy...”

“Don’t you ‘Bethy’ me,” she snaps, looking and sounding very much like their mother for a split second. “I’m playing the part for a week, and I have virgin hair. I don’t want to ruin it just because I’m playing Roxie.”

Garrett sighs. He doesn’t particularly want to think at all about Bethany’s virgin anything. “What about a wig? We still have the nice one Merrill wore in _Hairspray_.”

Andy hums, chewing on his pen. He snaps the clip off of it and smiles, oddly triumphant. “We have a Moroccan Velma Kelly and a Scottish Amos. I don’t see why we can’t have a brunette Roxie, too.”

“And I hate wearing wigs,” Bethany says. “It's fine in a regular play, but I can't stand wearing one for a musical. If it slips while I’m dancing, it’ll look terrible. It’s not like we can afford the expensive ones that don’t.” 

Garrett realizes he’s not going to get anywhere with either of them, not when Bethany’s hair is on the line and Andy’s going to side with her out of spite. He sighs. “Fine, be that way about it. Both of you are going to turn my hair gray.”

“It’s already going gray,” Andy says, gesturing to both his temples. “It may be time to start coloring, Gare.” He turns away and pretends to not see them high-five each other behind his back, going up onto the stage to see how well Sebastian is doing with dropping his accent.

“C’mon,” Marian is saying. “It can’t be that hard.”

“Says you.” The tiny, nearly invisible line between his eyebrows deepens as he glares at his script. “This... Chicago accent you keep talking about is insane. I can’t just swap the one I have for another.” 

Varric paces back and forth over his place marker, “If Bob Hoskins could do it, so can you, Choir Boy.” 

“Bob who?”

Varric groans and covers his face with both hands, mumbling to himself about how kids these days don’t know anything about jack shit, while Marian taps her script on the crown of Sebastian’s head, putting on a heavy, theatrical brogue, “Never mind. We believe in you anyway, laddie.”

On stage left, Merrill is teaching Isabela her choreography for “All That Jazz,” perching herself precariously on the back of a chair balancing on its back legs while Isabela squawks, “This is you paying me back for breaking your finger in _Avenue Q_ , right? You’re trying to kill me.”

“Who, me? No.” 

Merrill’s voice is entirely too cheery, and Isabela looks less than comforted as she tilts the chair and copies Merrill’s pose. “I’ll break your whole damn hand if this isn’t as safe as you make it look, you little witch.” 

“If you break her, Mer, you have me to answer to,” Garrett says. Merrill turns around a sticks her tongue out at him while Isabela makes a dismissive gesture at him that throws off her balance and sends her and the chair onto the floor. 

“Well, shit,” she says eloquently. “You do that again, you’ll _both_ have me to answer to. Jesus Christ.” 

It's a little crazy, and it's a little stressful, but it feels good, like being home with family.


	13. Dance

People look at her and see “flaky” and “tiny” and “hippie”, someone “dainty” and “vegetarian” and “weak.”

She’s not weak. She can lift as much with her legs as Carver can bench press. She can stand indefinitely without getting sore. She can run a marathon and hardly feel the burn in her muscles. She can keep up with Aveline and Don at the gym. She’s worked on broken toes and fractured feet and sprained ankles and twisted knees and torn muscles. 

They all have their ways of working out the excess, over-stuffed energy that comes from living. Varric reads. Andy writes. Garrett hikes. Marian paints. Carver lifts. Bethany sings. Aveline meditates. Don fences. Sebastian prays. Fen composes. Isabela swims. Merrill dances.

People don’t look at her and think “dancer”. She’s not aggressive enough for jazz. She’s too white for hip hop and breakdancing. She’s not coordinated enough for tap and jig and step-dancing. She’s not sexy enough for belly dancing or pole or chair. She’s not focussed enough and has too many tattoos to be a ballerina. 

It doesn’t matter that she’s been dancing for thirty years, or that ballet saved her life when she was in high school, or that she’s dedicated her life to to studying it, because why should it? She doesn’t look the part, and therefore can’t possibly be a dancer.

But, when she’s at the theatre and she’s teaching everyone their choreography, no one doubts her--not that anyone here ever did, but even an outsider can’t deny that she owns the stage, commands her audience, and shines like she doesn’t anywhere else.

“No, no, Varric, like this.”

“You make that look easier than it is, Daisy.”

“It is easy. Come here, give me your hand, and watch my feet, okay? Do exactly as I do.” She sings the song slowly, in time with her movements, giving him the chance to make the connections to what step happens when. “See? It’s not so hard now, is it?”

It never is, but no one ever believes her.


	14. Valentine

There is no cast party after Chicago closes. No one wanted to have one. 

Varric and Bianca have plans to go out and celebrate the holiday together at some swank uptown tapas bar, Isabela and Garrett were going to drive down to the bed and breakfast down on the coast for the weekend after the curtain dropped for the last time, Aveline and Donnic were going to go home and spend the remaining hours of Valentine’s Day doing whatever it is married people do on Valentine’s Day (no one bothered to ask what married-people thing they were doing, but it was safe to assume it was romantic and a little bit boring), Carver and Bethany were going on a blind double date, Fenn and Marian got into a huge fight and both went home alone to steam. All the chorus members either paired off or found their way home sometime during the night. 

It seems perfectly natural for Merrill to invite Andy over so they can be lonely together. He’d never invite himself over or ask her to stay at his sad little apartment over his landlady’s garage, but she can tell he was thinking the same thing about spending the night together, so they can be lonely in good company.

They’re alike that way. 

She’s tucked against one side of the couch while he’s sitting on the floor in front of her, letting her brush out the product from his hair before he goes to shower, half-drunk and empty bottles of hard cider and a few mostly eaten cartons of Thai takeout on the coffee table in front of them. He’s staring a little blearily at the TV but not watching it, and she knows she’d be a little concerned if he was actively paying attention to a show that seems to be about a noodle-armed kid in a funny hat and his shape-shifting yellow dog-type pet thing.

“I hate this holiday.”

“You hate every holiday.”

“But this one’s a Hallmark holiday. Totally commercial. It’s different, worse, even.”

“If you say so, Andy.”

They sit in silence again for a long while. She’s done brushing out his hair but at this point she’s just playing with it anyway. He finishes his third bottle of cider and reaches for another, but she slaps his hand away from the case. 

“Three's more than enough for you, you lightweight. You have work tomorrow.”

He sighs heavily, his breath rattling his bones. He’s lost weight, stretched a little thinner than he was a month ago. “I don’t want to go. I’m sick of people and their stupid people problems. Fuck ‘em.” 

He’s just drunk enough to seem petulant, a bratty sort of arrogant that’s all Andy’s own. Merrill echos his sigh and gets up off the couch to start putting the leftovers and what’s left of the cider into the fridge, leaving him mumbling and morose in her living room. She hears him get up and follow her, but she ignores him. He gets needy when he’s drunk and it won’t do to encourage him when there’s no one else around to keep him occupied.

But he looks so sad. She bumps the fridge shut with her hip and turns towards him. “What’s on your mind?”

“We don’t have Valentines,” he says. “That’s not fair.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t want one this year, just like I didn’t last year. I have all of you to be my platonic Valentines.”

“But don’t you get lonely?”

“Always. But I don’t need someone in my bed at night to make me feel loved. I never have.”

He bristles. “Neither do I. I like being alone.”

“No you don’t. You hate it.”

“I do.”

“But you like being miserable.”

“A little. But so did you.” His wan smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He reaches out and puts his hand on her wrist, over the raised lines hidden under her tattoos, making her skin buzz anxiously at the gentle touch. She steps out of his reach and tries to ignore the way _"kindred"_ flashes across her mind, echoing down her arm to where her skin is still vibrating from his touch, itching. He sighs. "That was different, though.” 

Very different, but it doesn’t make him any less of a masochist. _Kindred_. He says nothing, looks down at the floor, somewhere between her bare burgundy-lacquered toes and his plain black socks. He drew attention to something that was off limits, and he’s embarrassed the way only drunk people can get, and she almost pities him and that kicked-puppy vibe he’s giving off. She asks, “When was the last time you went on a date, or went out except to go to work or rehearsal?” 

“A while.”

“Andy.” He looks up at her. “Let’s go to bed. We’ve had a long day.”

He’s compliant like a child and she pulls him through her apartment to her bedroom, when she strips him down to his boxers and hands him a pair of sweatpants she’d once borrowed from Marian and never returned because she knew someday someone would need a pair of baggy-ass sweatpants to wear around for a while. They’re short, but they seem like they fit him pretty well, or well enough for the night, and he even seems to vaguely appreciate that she has a shirt that fits him, too. He sits on the edge of her bed and flops backwards when she changes her own clothes, giving her a little bit of privacy as she pulls on another men’s t-shirt and a pair of underwear that actually covers her ass some. 

By the time she goes back out into the living room to turn off the lights and the TV and comes, back, Andy has managed to get himself under the covers and is half-asleep already, sleeping facing the dresser on the other side of the room, leaving space on the half of the mattress against the wall for her, just like she likes. She turns off the light and crawls up the bed so she can get under the covers with him.

She curls up against his back, a little big spoon, feeling the steady rise-fall of his ribs and the strong pump of his heart under her palm, smells a little bit of his sweat from performing earlier and the smell of her laundry detergent on his borrowed shirt.

_Kindred_.


	15. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, everyone! Writer's block and life stuff... you know how it is. Enjoy!

There’s nothing quite like the smell of fresh newsprint and hot dogs at eight in the morning. The old Hollingrove building reeks of both every weekday; Saturday, Sunday, and from midnight to five being the only reprieves. At the very least it’s a highly unpleasant combination, and at worst it’s noxious. 

Isabela doesn’t miss her apartment in the old Hollingrove building. She doesn’t miss her creaky brass bed and its lumpy mattress. She doesn’t miss the draughts or the Saran-wrapped windows. She doesn’t miss the weak water pressure or the alternating scalding-freezing shower. She doesn’t miss the cheap vinyl floor that’s never clean no matter how often she vacuums and mops. She doesn’t miss the constant cigarette stink that’s coming from every apartment that isn’t hers. She doesn’t miss the leaky paneled ceiling and the bum ceiling fan that was fried during said leak.

The bed she wakes up in on February fifteenth is infinitely preferable to her whole apartment. The company she wakes up next to is infinitely preferable to the mean old mouser that patrols the hallways and the feral cats that hang out on her balcony. She doesn’t need to open her eyes to know that she’s already in love with the Wounded Coast Bed and breakfast; she can smell the cold ocean air in their rented room. 

It smells like home. When she does open her eyes to the cold gray February sunshine, it looks like home, too. It smells like the Pacific. It smells a little like sex, too. It just drives the point home that she never wants to leave this bed. Beside her, Garrett is still asleep, snoring gently, his hair mussed from sleep and flecked lightly with gray at his temples and in his beard. 

She loves him very much. She’d decided it a while ago, but so far she hasn’t said anything to him about this. She’s very happy with the way things are and she doesn’t want anything to change. She smiles and gently touches his beard with her fingertips, watching her red-lacquered nails disappear as she scritches his hidden skin.

Garrett’s eyes crinkle, but they don’t open. “Hey, now.”

“Hm?”

“That tickles.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah,” he says, yawning into the pillow. His eyes open and they meet hers. He smiles contentedly, and just a little bit besottedly. “It does.”

She chuckles and cups his cheek instead. “You’re adorable, but your breath stinks. Dog breath.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“Get up?”

He reaches for her, pulling her in close and throwing the blankets he stole back over her. He nuzzles against her neck. “Not yet. We don’t do this enough.”

She puts her arms around him. “We cuddle naked all the time.”

“But not on vacation.”

“But not on vacation, yes.”


End file.
